Monster garage ignites new call for heritage tag in Walkerville
Dismay over the addition of a large two-car garage to a Windermere Road house has sparked a renewed and intensified call to “protect the look and feel of Walkerville.” On Monday, at the urging of Ward 4 Coun. Chris Holt, city council requested a staff report on making the area a heritage conservation district, a designation residents began calling for at least six years ago. But the issue has picked up momentum in recent months, largely due to recent developments that people believe have “not been sensitive to the heritage look of the neighbourhood,” according to Holt.
Making Walkerville a heritage conservation district to protect the neighbourhood’s brand has “massive grassroots appeal,” Holt said. He said there have been several examples of houses being changed or built in ways that aren’t suitable, such as when a dilapidated old building was torn down several years ago and replaced with a ranch-style house more suited to a modern subdivision.
But the garage addition to the house at the corner of the Windermere and Richmond Street “caused the greatest uproar,” said Holt. The house is located on the north side of a wide lot. The southern portion of the property had been used as a side yard and was surrounded by a hedge. The addition, still under construction, takes up much of the southern section, with living space above and a double garage below facing Windermere, where there will eventually be a wide driveway cutting into the curb.
“It would be appropriate in the suburbs, but a lot of people feel it doesn’t fit the look and feel of Walkerville, basically the ‘je ne sais quoi’ that makes it such a special place,” said Holt. Speaking for the Olde Walkerville Residents Association, Shane Mitchell said the garage “certainly was a trigger” to renew the call for a heritage conservation district. “A lot of people were certainly disappointed to see that,” he said of the garage.
The owner of the Windermere Road house, Tatyana Francic, declined to comment on criticism of her addition, which is being built with the required city permits. The city already has a couple of these heritage conservation districts: in Sandwich and the 200 block of Riverside’s Prado Place. Mitchell said there are two aspects of Walkerville that need protecting: keeping buildings compatible with the traditional architecture of the neighbourhood and maintaining the neighbourhood’s urban, walkable, well-treed vibe.
The garage would have been better if it had been built with its doors facing the alley, consistent with almost all other garages in Walkerville, he said. This would have eliminated the need for a driveway that cuts across the sidewalk and eliminates two street parking spaces and a portion of grassy boulevard.
If more people started doing this, there would be less street parking, leading to even more people applying for driveways on their front lawns, Mitchell said.
He said a “perfect example” of the kind of architectural blemish a heritage conservation district would prevent is a boxlike commercial addition put onto the front of one of the century-old semis on Walker Road many decades ago. That “snout” addition makes the entire strip of houses look less appealing, he said.
Another example is when people cover up old brick with stucco. Mitchell, an architectural technologist, said that since the November fire that destroyed six heritage townhouses on Argyle Road, he’s been talking to the owner about rebuilding in a style that fits with the area. The owner is on board, he said, but without a heritage conservation district, there would be nothing to prevent someone from replacing the townhouses with the snout-style townhouses being built in new subdivisions.
A heritage conservation designation, he said, is “really trying to avoid these drastic and incompatible developments.”
If a house is torn down or burns down, the rules might require it be replaced with a two-storey house instead of a single storey, that it have a front porch, and that the garage be located off the alley, Holt suggested.
“It’s preserving the fabric and character of the neighbourhood, but it’s not telling you what colour to paint your front door, what kind of bricks or windows to put in.” Calling Walkerville the last remaining intact community of its kind in the region, Holt said it was designed so that all the services — like parking and garbage collection — went through the alleys, to create a beautiful front with porches and trees.
“The more and more we nick away at that, the less appealing Walkerville is going to be,” he said. He said the heritage conservation district could call for special ‘Welcome to Walkerville’ signage and heritage street lights reminiscent of the ones in Hiram Walker’s original plans.
Holt said that, when the staff report is completed, he expects a big turnout of residents expressing support or opposition to creating a heritage conservation district. When you say Walkerville, people automatically picture the 1890s row houses on Monmouth Road or the stately Victorians on Willistead Crescent, he said. “Basically, we just want to preserve the character of the neighbourhood.”